But how much was I hurting her in the meantime?
It wasn’t quite dusk yet when a flatbed truck pulled to a stop beside us, and a man stepped out and introduced himself as Brother Lance. The six of them started packing up the vegetables, and Brooke and I pitched in, leaving the old wooden stand empty until tomorrow. They climbed into the back with the crates of food, and I lifted Boy Dog up after them. We held tight to the metal handrails as the truck rocked gently back and forth through a three-point turn and then rattled back down the road where it had come from. I looked at Brooke, and she looked at me, and we watched each other quietly as the sun dropped out of sight and the bright blue sky turned yellow, then orange, then a blue so deep that all the other colors of the world seemed to fall into it and disappear. Brother Lance turned on his headlights, and we pulled off onto a dirt road, passing through a nondescript gate and driving toward an old white farmhouse that seemed to shine as the light beams hit it.
“Home again,” said Sister Debbie, smiling with the same mellow emptiness she’d used earlier to point out a bird flying over the vegetable stand.
The truck stopped, and I jumped out before lifting Boy Dog down with a grunt. He explored the dirt driveway, sniffing the tire tracks and the tufts of night-black grass. I turned back to help Brooke, but she was already down, and put a hand on my arm, pressing close to whisper in my ear.
“I’m sad.”
Instantly I worried about another suicide attempt, but before I could even start the process of changing her mind, she shook her head, pressing closer and forcing me a few steps to the side, out of earshot of the cultists. “Not for me,” she said. “For them.”
I glanced at the six farmers unloading the truck, listless and cheerful all at once. “You think they’re sad?”
“I don’t think they can be sad,” said Brooke. “So I’m being sad for them.”
Brother Stan nodded toward us, his arms full of vegetable boxes. “Would you mind grabbing a crate each and following me up to the house? I can introduce you to Christopher.”
“This is it,” I whispered to Brooke. “I don’t want you to freak out, but I want you to be ready to run if we have to. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“We don’t know what we’re going to find in there, and we don’t know what this Withered can do, so just … be ready for anything.”
“I’m not going to freak out,” she said, stooping to pick up a crate.
I picked up one of my own and followed her, ten or twenty steps behind Brother Stan. “I just don’t want to take you by surprise, okay? We’re partners in this.”
“I’ll take care of you,” said Brooke.
Brother Stan waited for us by the door, propping it open with his foot. After a moment of terrified hesitation, I went in. It scared me to be here, so far from help, so far from anything, but the lights were on, and I could hear happy voices murmuring in a nearby room. The door led in to a kitchen, and we set the wooden crates on the floor where Brother Stan pointed.
“I’ll go get Christopher,” said Brother Stan, and I realized it was unsettling to hear him talk about someone, especially a fellow cultist, without “Brother” at the beginning. Christopher lived here, but he was fundamentally different from the others. I didn’t know what to expect. Brother Stan left us alone in the kitchen, and I felt for the gun in the back of my waistband, hidden by my shirt. The magazine was hidden in one of my backpack straps, in a pocket I’d made by digging out the padding. There was no way we could kill a Withered with something as simple as a gun, but it might buy us enough time to get out.
“The dirt road was a straight shot in from the gate,” I said. “Maybe a hundred yards at the most. If I say go, you go, okay? Don’t wait for me, just get out, and I promise I’ll be right behind you.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll protect you.”
“He can control people’s minds,” I said. “We don’t know how, but we don’t want to give him a chance to try it. Just—”
“Calm down,” said Brooke. “I told you, I’ve got this.”
Her assurance only made me more nervous. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to stop him from controlling our minds,” said Brooke.
“You don’t have … powers,” I said. “You remember that, right?”
“Of course I know that,” Brooke whispered. “But he doesn’t.”
“Brooke—”